DHL Says Small Gains Equals Big Carbon Savings
November 13th, 2008
DHL has set up a new subsidiary Neutral Services, to improve the efficiency of both DHL’s and its customers’ supply chains. The move could be one which is replicated by other logistics providers world-wide. Neutral Services CEO, Karl Feilder, says, “The first thing you need to understand about greening a supply chain is that the term ‘green’ is not specific enough. It has the wrong connotations. This is about saving money and becoming efficient.” It is a daunting task considering DHL has set itself the ambitious target of cutting emissions by 30% by 2020 – a task made more challenging by the company’s global operations spanning 220 countries and boasting 400 aircraft, 170,000 staff, 4,500 warehouses and other properties, and thousands of trucks.
Total Supply Chain Focus. With a huge chunk of its carbon footprint resulting from transport, Feilder accepts the company’s emission targets are challenging, but he insists they are achievable as long as DHL addresses the entire supply chain. “It’s about making a lot of small changes. By focusing ruthlessly on carbon reduction in all parts of the supply chain we think we can do it.” Feilder says every reduction project DHL is undertaking as part of the initiative has also cut operating costs.
Difficult. Its emission reduction programme has been divided into four areas: assessment, reduction, replacement and neutralisation. Assessment of a supply chain’s carbon footprint can be very difficult. Between a grower and a retail store there can be as many as 47 companies involved, and each of their carbon metrics change every day. Fielder says, “Rather than manually assessing the carbon outputs at all these points in the supply chain and feeding them into a computer system, DHL Neutral Services is installing IT systems to collect the information and process it automatically – so any changes are monitored in real time.”
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